U.S. Pat. No. 5,774,053, which is hereby incorporated by reference, describes a storage device for the delivery and pickup of goods. As recognized in that disclosure, home delivery of goods has become more and more popular with the rise of shopping over the Internet, by catalog, and so on. In addition to clothing, appliances, furniture, books and other materials previously available from catalogs and the like, the Internet has spawned e-shopping services for groceries and other items. Similarly, in many areas local merchants such as dry cleaners offer residential pickup and delivery services for their customers.
The storage device described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,774,053 provided a means for such home pickups and deliveries even when the homeowner was absent. Briefly, the storage device provided a secure environment for the goods and included a communication apparatus for providing notification that the goods had been picked up or delivered. Access to the storage device was gained by entering a so-called vendor code into a controller via a keypad. The controller oversees locking/unlocking of the storage device. Entering a valid vendor code unlocks the storage device, allowing couriers and/or others to pickup and/or deliver goods from/to the storage device.
One shortcoming with the storage device described by U.S. Pat. No. 5,774,053 concerns the use of the vendor codes. As contemplated, the vendor codes are static, reusable codes assigned to each vendor that delivers and/or picks up goods to/from the storage device. "For example, a laundry and drycleaning (sic) business may be assigned a vendor code of 333, whereas a local grocery store may be assigned a vendor code of 444." U.S. Pat. No. 5,774,053 at col. 5, ll. 39-45. The use of such vendor codes presents a security risk in that once an unauthorized person learns one of the codes, that individual has access to the storage device until such time as the code is removed from the list of authorized vendor codes stored in the controller's memory. This presents a problem inasmuch as several days or weeks may pass before a storage box owners learns that one or more of the vendor codes has been compromised and has time to reprogram the controller with new vendor codes. During this time, the security of the storage box is questionable at best. Moreover, the assigning, canceling and reassigning of the vendor codes requires what could be a significant amount of time and effort (key management) on the part of a storage device owner/end-user. Also, the vendors are required to keep track of codes for different customers and, presumably, must take steps to ensure that the security of these codes are maintained.